On My Mind Lately..

Lost

You turn on the shower, this is no unordinary movement. You open your mouth to say something but don’t even know where to begin. Nothing comes out.

You get in and just let the water run, you’ve done this more than three hundred million times in your life. You’re scared and you know you feel it, but you give it a go anyways. You pour out your heart.

You realize after a while, you’ve gotten used to the heat. You turn the nozzle up. You realize nothing gets through. Nothing is understood. Nothing is more clarified than it was before this new version of the same repetitive argument.

The new temperature isn’t satisfactory, the nozzle goes up another time. You start to feel it again. Different boyfriend, years and years later, same sick wonder. What if none of this changes?

Maybe the temperature gauge is broken, so you crank that bad boy up. It’s almost becoming too late now-it’s feeling like there’s no point in fighting. Fighting for what? You stand back silent, knowing deadliness of the heart.

It’s so different, but so similar at the same time. You know the water is hot enough, but you keep turning it up anyways. The lukewarm water isn’t good enough, it’s not okay to just be mediocre ‘okay.’ You get sick of having to turn the temperature up, so you blast it. The second that scorching water hits your skin you jump back against the cold wall of the shower-out of the direct line of fire of the piercing bullets coming from above. In that fight or flight moment, you choose flight-the fight isn’t worth your heart anymore. Then it all changes, you dabble your fingers in the fight, and try to tell yourself it isn’t as bad as you thought. So you tell your body to armor up, it’s time for battle. You step back into the fire, and let the attack rain down. At first it’s miserable. Your body doesn’t want to stand it, and begs you to give it relief from the misery. Your mind tells you a little more strength and perseverance is all you need, you can take more than you think. All of the sudden you find your mind wandering elsewhere, only then realizing you aren’t thinking about the pain any longer. You put your hand into the bullets and realize you’re numb. Now you think maybe the torture has gone on long enough, and you shut the operation down. Reaching for your towel, all you see is red. You look down and notice it’s everywhere. Your entirety is covered with red. Every single visible ounce of you is blotched and burning bright back up at you. The under-lying bruises are the only things you can see shining clearly through the red haze. Quizzical.

You step out and everything is vivid in your mind. You wonder what just happened?